An­swer seen in Subi’s des­e­cra­tion

I AT­TENDED the last Feed Box Mar­ket at Scar­bor­ough Beach on Satur­day, De­cem­ber 19.

In times gone by, my fam­ily en­joyed reg­u­lar trips out to the Su­bi­aco mar­kets for lunch and shop­ping.

The Metropoli­tan Re­gional Au­thor­ity was given the task of mod­ernising Su­bi­aco, which has re­sulted in the clo­sure of both mar­kets, multi-storey de­vel­op­ment on the ad­ja­cent park­lands and a traf­fic plan that has made the area ba­si­cally in­ac­ces­si­ble to ve­hi­cles.

Now the au­thor­ity has come to Scar­bor­ough. Its key ob­jec­tives are to re­vi­talise the area and cre­ate a vi­brant com­mu­nity ex­pe­ri­ence for vis­i­tors and res­i­dents alike.

The weekly Feed Box mar­kets were the first "green shoots" of com­mu­nity par­tic­i­pa­tion in Scar­bor­ough that I have seen in 25 years as a res­i­dent.

They were given the op­tion of mov­ing south of the surf club but the pow­ers-that-be could not pro­vide wa­ter and power for the stall­hold­ers. How can the MRA with a mul­ti­mil­lion man­date to re­vi­talise Scar­bor­ough be so ig­no­rant as to not sup­port a weekly com­mu­ni­ty­based event for the sim­ple and in­ex­pen­sive pro­vi­sion of a tap and a power out­let?

Un­for­tu­nately, we need only look to the des­e­cra­tion of Su­bi­aco's com­mu­nity as­sets for the an­swer.